


Maltesers

by okapi



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Anal Sex, Armpit Kink, Body Worship, Cock Warming, Coming In Pants, Foot Fetish, Frottage, Kinktober 2020, Leather Trousers, M/M, Masturbation, Masturbation in Shower, Multiple Orgasms, Oral Sex, POV Alternating, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, Praise Kink, Public Sex, Rimming, Shotgunning, Sleep Sex, Stuck in a wall, Sweat, Wax Play, What Happened in Malta (The Old Guard)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:34:08
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 18,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26819617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okapi/pseuds/okapi
Summary: 14.So Good.Joe is good. Praise kink. Anal. Top Nicky.15.Bookmark.While working at a used bookshop, Nicky gets stuck. Joe to the rescue. Anal. Oral.Joe & Nicky's kinky Malta times. For Kinktober 2020. Chapters stand alone.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 183
Kudos: 393
Collections: Kinktober 2020





	1. Rockstar angel slumming (Leather)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky in black leather pants. Public sex. Masturbation.
> 
> For Kinktober 2020: Day 4: Leather/Latex.

It wasn’t just a default that Joe was the spotter when Nicky was the sniper. Even without binoculars or other equipment, Joe had good eyes, and when the thing Joe was looking for was Nicky, he had _great_ eyes.

Like a seasoned bird watcher catching a fleeting glimpse of a familiar wing, Joe saw Nicky making his way through the market.

Joe was seated at a café opposite the last row of stalls. He was early for their rendezvous.

Nicky ignored the racks of clothing and displays of tourist souvenirs, but he stopped in front of a fruit seller.

Joe could see Nicky. He might have been seen, too, by Nicky if Nicky had bothered to raise his head and if he’d decided to look straight ahead—and if he had eyes as good as Joe’s, of course. But Nicky didn’t do any of those things. He was bending and pointing, asking something of the fruit seller, a short older woman. 

Joe couldn’t hear the exchange, but he imagined it based on Nicky’s face and gestures.

Nicky was protesting, politely, something about the jars which were stacked between him and the fruit seller.

The seller was insisting, and the outcome was that she was handing Nicky a piece of bread smeared with something.

Honey. Of course, honey.

Joe had finished the last of the honey this morning.

Nicky was chewing and nodding and pointing. There came another piece of bread.

He’s going to buy both, decided Joe, who was rewarded a few moments later as the purchase took place.

With a bag in hand and a few more pleasantries exchanged, Nicky resumed his journey through the market and towards their arranged meeting place.

Joe started.

Then he openly gawked.

So far, because of the tables and stalls, Joe had only seen Nicky from the waist up, and from the waist up, Nicky was wearing a simple cream-colored shirt, a very Nicky shirt.

But now he could see that from the waist down Nicky was in black leather.

Black. Leather.

The words stalled Joe’s brain.

Black. Leather.

Trousers. Pants. Whatever. Nicky’s legs, his ankles, calves, knees, thighs, and ass, were tightly wrapped in black leather. 

The pants had been purchased a decade ago for a mission that never materialized, and since then, Joe had only seen Nicky wear them twice. They weren’t Nicky’s kind of clothing at all. They weren’t practical, for starters. They didn’t have roomy pockets for snacks or crumbs for feeding birds. They weren’t soft. They were the very opposite of Nicky’s second great love, that is, the hoodie. 

_Turn around, beloved_ , thought Joe. _Be merciful and give us a look at that ass._

Nicky paused briefly to admire some artichokes, but, to Joe’s disappointment, he only turned to the side.

Well, profile was better than nothing.

That ass. In those pants.

Black. Leather.

Nicky looked like a rockstar, a rockstar angel slumming in an awful haircut buying honey in the market.

But why was he wearing the pants today?

Joe called to his mind the two other instances when Nicky had worn those pants, and as he did so, blood started to travel south. _Oh_. Joe hadn’t connected the dots before, but _oh_. Well, it just proved what Joe had always believed: that after almost a thousand years together, there were still new things for him and Nicky to discover about each other.

What had Joe discovered about his beloved?

_Nicky wore black leather pants when he was well-fucked._

The previous night, they’d fucked ‘til dawn. A marathon session by their standards, which were reasonable standards given the amount of data they’d amassed.

Hard, fast. Slow, deep.

Lots of poetry. Lots of swearing. Lots of, well, love.

The other times, those two times, had followed similar nights. Memorable nights.

Well, well, well.

It all meant one thing.

_Joe was a fantastic lover, and Nicky had on the black leather pants to prove it._

As Nicky approached, Joe put his hands behind his head and let a smile of satisfaction split his face.

Nicky returned the smile, or his version of it, which is to say his mouth twitched a bit, but his eyes softened, and that was all that mattered to Joe.

“How did things go at the bank?”

“Excellent. We are still in legal possession of our domicile and shall be for the next hundred years or so.”

“Good. Thank you for taking care of that. I bought some honey.”

Nicky opened the bag. Joe peered in.

“Apricot honey,” said Joe.

“And the kind you like, too.”

Nicky was about to sit down at Joe’s table. He stopped, mid-descent, as Joe raked his eyes up and down, especially down.

“You look nice, my love.”

Nicky went slightly pink. He began to shrug, and then, like a schoolboy remembering a lesson, he met Joe’s gaze and nodded and said very deliberately. “Thank you very much.”

“You’re welcome,” said Joe, with equal politeness. “Let’s go for a walk. By the water?”

“Sure.”

Joe took the bag with the honey from Nicky and slung it over his shoulder.

They knew the area very well, and in about ten minutes, Joe had achieved his aim of getting Nicky alone. He’d been sneaking surreptitious glances at Nicky ass, but finally, he made to slip his hand into Nicky’s back pocket.

It was then Joe realized the black leather pants didn’t actually have a back pocket.

Nicky made a noise, which might have been a short chuckle. Then he took Joe’s hand in his and pushed it inside his pants.

And then Joe was gripping Nicky’s bare ass.

And it was wonderful.

Of course, Nicky wasn’t wearing any undergarments, the pants were too tight; that didn’t make the realization any less arousing to Joe.

Skin. Flesh. Leather.

His well-fucked lover. His all and more.

“What do you want?” asked Nicky quietly as they walked along, more slowly and more clumsily, tethered as they were, hand to ass.

Joe considered. “Most of all, I don’t want you to take off those pants.”

“I don’t want to take them off, either, given the look in your eyes.”

“What look?”

“Joe.”

Joe winked. He knew what look. “I want to jerk off while I touch you like this.” He squeezed Nicky’s ass. “What do you want, my love? You can have anything.”

Nicky shook his head dismissively. “I’m still good from last night.”

_I’m still good from last night._

He meant it. That’s how well Joe had fucked him.

The words and their implications made Joe’s cock go from interested to screaming for release in seconds. He withdrew his hand and pulled Nicky into the nearest rocky alcove. 

In a moment, Joe had dropped the bag with the honey on the ground. In another moment, his cock was out, held in his left hand, while his right arm was reaching around Nicky’s waist and his right hand was once more sunk down the back of Nicky’s pants.

Joe faced the rock wall. Nicky faced the sea.

“I’ll suck you off if you want.”

“No, I don’t want you on your knees. You’ll soil those pants.”

Nicky chuckled.

Joe spat on his hand and began to pump his cock with quick, hurried strokes. His other hand clenched and unclenched around Nicky’s buttock. He found a rhythm, then he sped it up.

“Sexy.” Joe pressed a kiss to Nicky’s neck. “You.”

“You, too.” Nicky’s eyes were on Joe’s cock. The heat and hunger in his gaze stoked Joe’s lust. “I took a nap after you left, and when I woke up, I was so…” 

“Tell me.”

“I don’t know.”

“You do. Tell me. I’m close.”

“Well-fucked. So incredibly well-fucked. I almost cried it felt so good.”

Joe made a strained noise and decorated the rock with streaks.

Nicky put both hands in Joe’s hair and kissed him.

Joe tasted the honey on Nicky’s lips. “That’s not apricot,” he observed as he removed his hand from Nicky’s pants and tucked his cock back into his own trousers. “I thought you tried two.”

“Were you watching?”

“I’m the spotter! It’s what I do! Spot things!” 

“I only asked to taste the one you like. Twice.”

“Why?”

“Because I thought if you kissed me it would be a nice surprise for you. The lady in the market agreed, by the way.”

Joe stopped and stared. He drowned himself for the hundred thousandth time in those eyes. He took both of Nicky’s hands in his and kissed the top of each. Then he came back to himself, enough to say,

“If? You come to the market dressed like a slumming rockstar angel and I’m not going to kiss you?” He snorted. “Come, love. Let’s go home.”

They left the alcove and made their way back toward the path.

“These pants, huh? They make you silly, Joe.”

“Do not,” Joe lied.

But Nicky got another confirmation of his statement when Joe had to run back and retrieve the honey he’d left behind. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love the fic [La Mia Albicocca](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25807414) by 4ce_in_sp4ce. From it I got my head canon that Nicky's favorite fruit is apricots.


	2. No candle can hold a candle to you. (Wax play)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe admires a candle in the market. Waxplay. Masturbation.
> 
> For Kinktober Day 6: Waxplay.

“There you are. I didn’t expect to find you here. What is it? Do you want one?”

Joe started.

Nicky was tight against him in the throng of tourists gathered round the artist’s stall in the market.

“I’m sorry, hayati.” Joe slipped his hand in Nicky’s and squeezed it. “What did you say?”

“Do you want one of those candles? You seem rather taken with the process of making them.”

The crowd, including Joe, were watching the artisan seated on a stool. The candle, thick like a tree stump, was on a table in front of her. She was carving slivers and folding them, creating ribbon-like designs of layered colors. Finished products were displayed on shelves behind her.

“Look, Joe, there are PSG colors.”

“It…”

Nicky waited.

“…made me think of you. That one.” Joe nodded to the unfinished candle on the table.

Nicky squeezed Joe’s hand. “A pink and purple and white candle looks like a little girl’s birthday cake made you think of me?”

Joe shrugged and smiled. Then he tugged Nicky out of the crowd. “Let’s go.”

* * *

The following evening at dinner, Nicky was looking furtive. “I want to surprise you.”

Joe’s eyebrow rose. “How?”

“I can’t say. Then it wouldn’t be a surprise. Could you take a walk or something tomorrow at dusk?”

“Sure. How long will I be walking?”

Nicky frowned. “An hour at least. No, two, I think.”

“I can manage that. Does it have anything to do with what was in the fourth shopping bag today?”

Nicky sat up straight. “Did you look in it?”

“No.” Joe knew better than that. “But I wondered,” he added gently.

“You’ll find out. Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow it is.”

* * *

Tomorrow came soon enough. Night had fallen by the time Joe returned from his walk. It was dark inside, too. Joe moved slowly, quietly, step by step, looking round.

“Nicky?”

“In here.”

Joe advanced until he stood in the threshold of the sitting room.

“Oh!”

There were candles everywhere. Short fat candles. Long thin tapers. Votives. They formed a circle, and inside the circle, like a da Vinci drawing, was a naked man with arms and legs outstretched, limbs which formed a X, limbs which were covered in dribbling, splattering streams of wax.

Purple, pink, and white wax.

In the centre of the X, in the centre of Nicky’s abdomen, a stub of a candle was fixed in a rugged mountain of wax. Its wick was dark, its flame flickering as the mountain rose and fell, as Nicky breathed in and out.

Joe was overwhelmed by the beauty of the scene and what it meant.

It meant that Joe's beloved had made himself a human candle. For him. For Joe. All because Joe had made a casual remark in the market.

It was so Nicky. So absurdly beautiful and beautifully absurd.

Joe’s first instinct was to laugh, but after casting a glance at Nicky’s face and noting the anxious, clouded expression and the bitten bottom lip, he would’ve cut out his own tongue before doing so.

“You are absolutely beautiful, beloved. I think you must’ve crept into my dreams and stolen one from the deepest recesses of my imagining to have created this, to have used yourself as a canvas for my admiration.”

Joe moved inside the circle and sank to one knee. He bent forward to examine the wax more closely. Rivers of three colors braided together, running from the center, from the mountain peak, down Nicky’s arms and legs.

Joe reached out a hand and touched the rough, bumpy texture of the wax. There were layers upon layers, cascading.

“This took much patience.”

“I am patient.”

One corner of Joe’s mouth lifted. “Yes, ya qamar, you are. And you look so lovely by the candlelight. It makes me remember the days when all we had were candles. And fire.”

Joe met Nicky’s gaze and the memories of that face, that beautiful face, lit by a millennia-old glow came flooding back and overwhelmed him. “I love you,” he said quickly before moving up Nicky’s body and kissed his beloved’s lips. “I love this, what you’ve done for me. You’re a work of art. Your love is a work of art.”

Nicky smiled a smile as warm as a hundred thousand candles, and Joe melted like wax.

Joe pressed his lips together and pulled away. “May I ask a favor, beloved?”

“Anything.”

“Artist to artist, you understand. May I draw you?”

Nicky’s eyebrows rose abruptly, but his smile didn’t fade.

Joe’s heart was gripped with a sudden joy; he liked finding that he could surprise Nicky, too. His was not on the same scale as Nicky’s surprise, but still.

“Of course,” said Nicky.

“It may take a few minutes.”

Nicky’s eyes lit with unspoken mirth and irony. “I have time.”

“You aren’t uncomfortable?”

Nicky shook his head. “It a warm night.”

Joe gave him a quick peck on the lips and went and fetched his things.

* * *

Joe had lied. It took far more than a few minutes.

Indeed, by the time he had finished the second and last sketch, Nicky was asleep and the candle on Nicky’s abdomen had dwindled to a short plug of wax.

“Wake up, my love.” Joe put a hand to Nicky’s bare shoulder and watched his beloved’s eyelids flutter.

“Finished?”

“Yes, thank you for your patience and forbearance.”

Nicky hummed. 

“I did two. One in charcoal and one in watercolor pencils.”

Nicky smiled.

“May I extinguish your flame, my love?”

“We tried that. About nine hundred years ago. Many times. It doesn’t work, remember?” The light in Nicky’s eyes was teasing. He nodded toward his belly. “Go ahead.”

“Let me put these things away first.”

When Joe returned, Nicky’s eyes traveled over him, widening and darkening when they came to rest on Joe’s hand and the bottle of lubricant.

“Not with breath, beloved, will I wet your wick.”

“Joe.” Nicky let his head fall back on the floor. He stared at the ceiling and licked his lips, and by chance, Joe saw, he actually witnessed, Nicky’s cock, lovely but flaccid until that moment, twitch.

Joe grinned wolfishly and knelt beside his beloved, making certain that Nicky had a good view of him without straining.

And Nicky watched—Oh, how he watched! Whole volumes of erotic verse could be composed on how Nicky watched his lover take his cock in hand—as Joe stroked himself.

Joe kept his eyes on Nicky’s body, on his lover laid out before him, on how long it would’ve taken and how patient and determined Nicky would’ve had to been to achieve it.

“You’re going to have to have very good aim.”

“Just keep watching, and don’t worry about my aim, sniper.”

“I’m not going to bet against you, that’s for certain.”

Joe laughed, then returned his attention to his cock. He was getting close. Very close. He listened to Nicky moan his name. From the corner of his eye, he saw Nicky’s feet and legs moving, restless.

He’s enjoying this, too, thought Joe. Good. 

The tiny flame danced. Burning so low, however, it was almost ready to go out by itself.

But no, that wouldn’t do.

Wax tears dripped down Nicky’s side.

Joe’s lust built, and he readied his body, cock in hand.

Hiss! The flame went out, angry as a cat!

“Ah-ha!” Joe threw his hands up in the air in triumph after confirming that he had, indeed, added his own color to the canvas of his beloved.

Nicky laughed a full-bellied laugh, which jostled the snuffed candle, causing its curl of smoke to jerk oddly in the air. Even without it, there was still plenty of warm light to see by; the candles set about still bathed the whole room and the lovers in a collective, autumnal glow.

Joe caught his breath. He slid towards Nicky’s head and began to pick absentmindedly at the wax on Nicky’s forearm. “I will pleasure you in any fashion you desire, ya qamar, but…”

“Yes?”

“I have an idea.”

“I like it.”

“You don’t know what it is yet.”

“I know by the tone of your voice, mio tesoro, that I will like it.”

“My idea is this: the safest way to remove all of this wax is with oil.”

“I bought two bottles when I bought the candles,” said Nicky quickly.

“Excellent. If you will allow, I will remove this,” Joe continued to pick at the wax, “and well, things may get slippery, they may slide, in and out…”

“Oh!”

“Since it took two hours to create the masterpiece, I think it should take at least that to dismantle it.”

“Two hours?”

“Three? Four? After all, I have time. And a lot of oil.”

Nicky snorted. “Remember when all we had was oil.”

“And candles. It would be a pleasure, my love, for me to restore you to your natural state. I will rediscover you, bit by bit. Like painting restoration.”

“Art is its own reward.”

“So they tell me. Let’s find out.” 


	3. Not the Bible. (Rimming)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky's reading. Joe's rimming. 
> 
> For the 2020 Kinktober Day 7: Rimming.

Joe clapped his hands as he swept into the sitting room and announced,

“All right! The lamb’s got to marinate.”

“Thank you, my love,” said Nicky, without looking up.

“You’re welcome.”

Joe picked up Nicky’s legs by the ankles and slid himself underneath them, settling himself at one end of the sofa.

Nicky’s head and a thick book were propped up at the other end of the sofa, and Nicky’s body was stretched out, prone, in between.

As Nicky resettled, his shirt hiked up, revealing a thin sliver of skin. That decided Joe about not turning on the game. He put a hand on Nicky’s lower back and, glancing at the back of Nicky’s head, which obscured most of the book from view and remarked, casually, teasingly,

“That isn’t the Bible, is it?”

“No!” Nicky snorted with indignation. “It’s not.”

“Because if that were the Bible…”

Joe slid his hand under Nicky’s shirt and rubbed circles on Nicky’s skin, then he curled his fingers and grabbed the waistband of Nicky’s sweatpants and underwear together, tugging them down and let them go, allowing the elastic snap them back into place.

“Because if that were the Bible,” he repeated.

It was easy to forget things after a thousand years, but one thing Joe did remember was a drunk Nicolò di Genova confessing that, in addition to vivid dreams of a mysterious, as-then-unnamed, dark-haired, bearded man sailing and drawing and reciting poetry and fighting and buying and selling, he had also had a few singularly erotic and, given that Nicky had been studying to be a priest, in no little part blasphemous reveries about said unnamed, dark-haired, bearded man. 

And one of these naughty nightmares had to do with a certain mouth and a certain tongue pleasuring a certain sensitive part of Nicolò’s body while the lad tried, in vain, to concentrate on his studies.

The tableau, as Nicolò had described it, was much like the one before Joe, and he intended to do something about it.

Joe shifted and leaned forward so that he could press his lips to Nicky’s bare skin, that exposed swathe of less than an inch between the bottom of the shirt and the top of the sweatpants. 

“Joe?”

“It’s not the Bible, so it’s okay if I do this.” 

Joe kissed the spot again, then he dragged his tongue across it and wriggled the tip of his tongue very suggestively against Nicky’s skin, just in case Nicky was in any doubt about what Joe had in mind.

“But the lamb?”

“Has to marinate. For three hours.”

“Santa Madre di Dio!”

Nicky’s whispered oath was all that Joe needed. He gripped Nicky’s sweatpants and underwear and pulled them down to his knees. He bit at Nicky’s lovely flesh, those round buttocks, so plump, so pale, so utterly edible.

Joe bit them again. And again.

Nicky squeaked, admittedly, a bit like a mouse.

Joe glanced up.

Nicky was still propped up on his elbows. The book was still open. Joe could just see the edges of it. It was thick, probably some dusty history book Nicky had dug up in one of Malta’s secondhand bookshops. Whatever it was, reading it couldn’t possibly compare to what Joe had in mind.

“You don’t have to…”

Nicky, Nicky, Nicky. Still? After almost nine hundred years?

“I know I don’t have to…”

Joe shifted again and moved up Nicky’s body so that he could point his tongue down into the cleft of Nicky’s ass. He wiggled his tongue. Then he lapped, overlapping each lick like the strokes of a paintbrush, as he moved down, down, down.

“I don’t have to do that, my beloved.” Joe moved to the side and bit Nicky’s buttocks again, firstly, to punctuate his point and, secondly, because, frankly, he loved biting Nicky’s ass. “I do it because I like it, like making you squirm and writhe and moan all kinds of wicked things.” 

Nicky whined. He slammed his face into the book, which was open and perched precariously on the arm of the sofa. Nicky twined the fingers of his hands together on the back his head. He rolled his body and from head to foot like a mermaid.

“Take them off, please. I want to move.” 

Joe got up and pulled Nicky’s underwear and sweatpants off and dropped them on the floor.

“That better?”

“Yes, thank you.”

It had been a rhetorical question because Joe knew damned well it was better because as soon as Nicky’s lower half was unhobbled by clothing, he was spreading his legs wide and lifting his ass in invitation.

And Joe accepted that invitation with alacrity.

“Yusuf!”

Joe had to pull back at that and pillow his head on Nicky’s buttock again. He thought he’d only been tongue-fucking Nicky for a few minutes. A quick check of the clock said he was right.

Santa Madre di Dio, indeed.

Nicky didn’t call Joe by the old name very often. 

“Are you okay? Joe?”

Joe didn’t look up. “Yeah. Give us a minute.”

“You don’t have to…”

“Shut up.” Joe closed his eyes and took a deep breath and slammed his face back between Nicky’s cheeks and thrust his tongue directly into Nicky’s hole.

“Joe! Don’t let go, please, my love. And don’t stop.”

Joe wasn’t about to let go. Or stop.

Not when Nicky started whimpering, chanting Joe’s name as if it were a prayer. Not when Nicky started rutting against the pillow like a dog in heat. Not even when Nicky reached back and gripped Joe’s head by the hair.

Joe didn’t stop. Or let go.

He tightened his hold on Nicky’s hips and tried to extend his tongue even farther into his lover’s body, to move it even faster. He pulled his tongue out and dragged it around Nicky’s puckered rim then pushed it in, deeper and deeper, angling his head, ignoring the ache in his jaw, no doubt, scouring certain portions of Nicky’s beautiful skin raw with his beard.

He wanted to make it good, no, he wanted to make it perfect. He wanted to driver the love of his life, of his many, many lives, out of his mind with pleasure, to leave him a quivering mess.

Joe’s tongue moved. Probing, tasting, teasing, loving.

He felt the tension in Nicky’s body, then he heard the guttural cry, ecstasy and agony dripping from the sound.

“Yusuf!”

WHAM-WHAM!

Joe jumped. The thud of the heavy book hitting the floor was enough to startle him out of his haze. His tongue flew back in his mouth. He raised his head and listened.

Nicky was panting his little tell-tale aftershock, afterglow pants.

Joe pulled back and sat up.

Nicky turned towards Joe, twisting his body, his nude body, as it turned out because, at some point, Nicky had decided to pull his shirt off, too. The pillow beneath Nicky was damp and soiled. His eyes, those beautiful blue-green-gray eyes, were glassy but full of love and wonder.

Love and wonder. All for Joe. It was a gift, one that Joe did not take for granted even after nine hundred years. He felt that the force of that love and blinked back tears.

Nicky curled towards Joe and brought his lips to Joe’s, not flinching for a moment at where Joe’s mouth had just been. When Nicky broke the kiss, he rested his head on Joe’s shoulder and snuggled closer and sighed with pure contentment.

Joe held him.

“My love, my moon, my all and my more…”

Joe stopped when he saw the book.

_“Fuck! It’s the Bible, Nicky!”_

“It’s a very modern version,” mumbled Nicky. “Not at all interesting, really. Some of the translation choices are ridiculous if you know anything about…”

But Joe barely heard Nicky, he was laughing far too loud.


	4. Absence Makes the Nap Grow Fonder. (Somnophilia)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky and Joe nap. 
> 
> For Kinktober 2020: Day 10: Somnophilia.

Sometimes they take a break.

Joe loves Nicky, but he also loves the sea and being around people, so sometimes he’ll pick a sunny Saturday and find a group and go diving. Not wrecks, though Malta is famous for those; the memory of Quynh haunted him for weeks after the first, and last time, he tried it.

Joe likes swapping stories and jokes, taking bets and losing them. He likes swimming. He likes wearing his cap backwards and sunglasses and smiling into the gusts produced by the boat cutting through water and air. He likes the reefs and the rocks. Sometimes, he can fill a whole sketchbook of drawings of fish and other marine creatures afterwards.

On these days, he returns to Nicky brimming with things to tell and awash in the joy of being, once again, with the person he calls home. Really, spending the better part of a day in diverting company and among fascinating natural phenomena are enough to put Joe in high spirits for weeks and weeks.

On these Saturdays, when Joe takes to the sea, Nicky takes a walk, a walk so long and so determined a bystander might easily mistake it for a pilgrimage. Nicky could sit and stare at the blue sky of Malta for hours, but he doesn’t. He walks. And walks. And walks. He knows he needs to be as tired as Joe will be when he returns.

Nicky’s walks always carry him by the market so he can pick up things to prepare a hearty lunch and have it ready for Joe because Joe always bursts in the door famished and exultant, with his arms spread wide, the better to gather Nicky up at once and hold him close. He always begins the same way, and Nicky loves it.

“Hayati, you won’t believe it…”

And so it was on this Saturday in Malta.

They took a break.

They reunited.

They ate. They talked.

Beneath the table, Nicky’s bare foot rested atop Joe’s. 

Nicky gathered up the plates and dumped them in the sink. 

“Nap?”

Joe licked his lips and nodded.

But, oh, that look.

Joe knew just what Nicky was suggesting.

It was part of these days apart, that they come back together like this. There was a heat in Joe’s eyes which Nicky returned in full measure and then some with his own gaze.

“You are,” Joe swallowed, “an extremely handsome man.”

Nicky raised an eyebrow and gave a tiny smile.

Joe nodded as if to say, ‘go on and do it.’

So Nicky did it.

He pulled off his shirt right there and threw it on the back of the chair. He marched straight for the small bedroom, unzipping his jeans as he went. He heard Joe behind him.

Nicky circled the bed.

The afternoon sun was bathing it in a bright, Mediterranean glow, the kind they put on picture postcards to sell to tourists.

Without taking his eyes from Joe, Nicky pushed his jeans and underwear down and drew them off.

Joe seemed to take a moment to drink the sight of a naked Nicky kneeling on the bed.

Then he stripped, too, very quickly.

This. This was the point of Nicky’s draining walk and the heavy lunch.

Nicky wanted to fuck, but in that moment, he wanted to sleep just a tiny bit more. Not the way they slept at night. Not Joe at Nicky’s back, and Nicky between Joe and the door.

Here, when they napped like this, after a day of exertion and separation, they faced one another with limbs tangled, on top of the bedding, bare in the sunshine, with the breeze caressing their nude bodies.

It was the combination, Nicky supposed, of the physical fatigue, the post-feasting languor, and the reunion bliss. And the lack of clothing, that helped, too.

Together, all these elements produced an unusual phenomenon. Well, perhaps not as unusual as immortality, but still an irregular phenomenon.

Joe and Nicky fucked in their sleep.

They’d had erotic dreams about one another before they met in Jerusalem, so perhaps it wasn’t so irregular after all, but these weren’t dreams.

Nicky would sometimes wake to find Joe’s come leaking from him or Joe’s pubic hair in his teeth. He often woke to find himself stuck to Joe and the taste of Joe’s cock in his mouth.

Nicky had showered and cleaned and stretched himself, ready for whatever their sleeping forms might want.

“My love.” Joe was looking up at him.

Nicky brushed his cheek. “I’m so glad you had a good day.”

“The day’s not over yet. I’m going to have a _great_ day.”

Nicky smiled. He raised his head a little and looked Joe up and down. “So beautiful.” Then he threw his leg over Joe’s hip. “Mine.”

“Yours.”

Joe laid his hand on Nicky’s buttock and rested his head on Nicky’s chest.

And sleep overtook them, together.

* * *

Nicky woke first. He always did.

He was under Joe. That was paradise.

Joe’s cock was still in him. That was bliss.

Nicky reached his free hand back to hold his lover in place.

_Stay, Joe, stay._

Joe made wet little grunts into Nicky’s neck.

Their hands were together, fingers laced, on the bed beside Nicky’s head.

“I love you,” Nicky whispered as he watched their joined hands sliding back and forth, making a furrow in the bedding, a furrow which grew deeper with each of Joe’s thrusts, “I wish I had prettier words, better words, to tell you how much. I wish I had all the poetry in my heart that you have in yours. It is so easy to love you, so easy to want you, so absurdly simply to entrust my heart and body and all that I am to you. I wish I were more only so I could give you more. I have to work at being good. I have to choose to be good. But you? You could be nothing else. Nothing but goodness and beauty and love. You are treasure. I believe you came into this world treasure and you will leave it a monument to love. Your smile lights up a room, the whole world. It is like this afternoon sun. It is like candlelight. It is something holy, something worthy of poetry and artistry and worship and craft. Sometimes, I ache for you, simply yearn for you, and then you touch me, or say my name, or even just turn those dark eyes my way, and I don’t want for anything else, not a single blessed thing in this world.”

“ _Nicky, nicky, nicky…_ ”


	5. Feats of Love. (Feet)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky tends Joe's feet. 
> 
> For the 2020 Kinktober Day 12: Feet.

It was a holy act. Or at least, there were holy elements to it.

For Nicky, it was an act of devotion. The desire to do it grew from the same soil that urged him to pray.

It was rare, too, that circumstances allowed for such an act. Maybe that added to the holiness.

This time began, as it always did, with a simple, ordinary statement by Joe.

“I’m going to watch the game.”

Nicky looked down at Joe’s feet, then up into Joe’s dark brown eyes. There was a query in his own eyes which was answered with a minute nod from Joe.

Nicky’s lips wanted to smile but didn’t. He was happy, nonetheless.

Joe eventually settled on the sofa and turned on the game while Nicky, having collected all he needed, settled himself on the floor kneeling.

First, he washed Joe’s feet.

It only took a few minutes for the noise of the television to disappear from Nicky’s consciousness. Indeed, in the beginning, he hardly regarded Joe at all, apart from his feet.

But that wasn’t entirely true.

Joe was the reason he was doing this. Nicky’s love for Joe manifested in many ways. This was just one. Nicky had no desire to wash anyone else’s feet. Not like this.

Nicky wet the feet with water, then lathered them with soap, then rinsed them over a basin.

As he scrubbed the heels with a pumice stone, he thought, as he’d often thought, ‘these feet have walked the earth for almost a thousand years.’

It was an enormous notion to hold in one’s head. Nicky could only bear it for a few breaths.

One of the most poignant moments occurred when the washing had finished. Nicky could never, ever rid himself of the idea that he ought to be drying Joe’s feet with his hair. He thought of it then, and he looked up.

Joe’s eyes were waiting for him. “Thank you, my love.”

Nicky nodded. He knew that Joe felt it, the holiness of the act, and it felt good to have it acknowledged before he moved on.

Nicky withdrew his attention from Joe’s warm gaze and busied himself with drying Joe’s feet with a towel.

Then he trimmed Joe’s nails.

It was after the trimming that the act of devotion transformed into an act of pleasure-giving.

Nicky lifted each foot in turn and pressed his lips to the center of each sole and each heel. Sometimes, he sucked Joe’s big toes, too, but not this time.

Then he picked up the jar of cream. He kept his eyes on Joe’s feet as he massaged the thick unguent into the rough soles, but he was purposefully more aware of Joe than earlier, his ears attuned.

Of course, Joe was watching the game, so many times the noises he made had nothing whatsoever to do with Nicky, but nevertheless, Joe would, on occasion, grunt or sigh or groan softly.

Nicky dug into Joe’s flesh with strong hands. His were not light, tickling touches. After all, the feet had walked the earth for almost a thousand years! And over the years, Nicky had learned where to press deep, the balls of the foot, where to rub and stretch, the toes, and where to knead savagely, heels and arches.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

Nicky didn’t know if Joe was commenting on the football or him.

“You, my love.”

Nicky gave a half-smile at this but did not look up. He redoubled his efforts.

“Fuck, Nicky, you’re going to make me hard, and the second half’s just started!”

Nicky gave Joe’s feet a last perfunctory rub and moved on.

Nicky shoved a spongy spacer between Joe’s toes.

Gold.

In truth, Nicky would’ve painted Joe’s toenails whatever color his lover desired, but Joe rarely had an opinion on the subject, and, so, gold it was.

Really, for his part, Nicky could think of no other color more appropriate.

Joe was the sun. He radiated warmth. His smile. His laughter. His stories and jokes. His joy.

He ought to be gilded, thought Nicky. It would demonstrate his value to the world.

Worth his weight in gold.

More.

Joe was worth more than any amount of gold, but as they lived and died and lived in a material plane, gold would have to do as a symbol.

And it was pretty. Sparkly.

As Nicky shook the little bottle, he was reminded of the holiness of the act.

It was like illuminating a manuscript.

It took time and care and patience and devotion.

Nicky had all of that.

When he was done, Nicky blew gently on Joe’s feet and admired his work.

Then he cleaned up.

“C’mere.”

“Is it over?”

“Yeah, they decided to have a brawl at the end. Five red cards. But, come here, I need you here.”

Nicky straddled Joe. He glanced over his shoulder.

“Still drying. Don’t move too much.”

Joe’s eyes shone. “I love you.” He took up Nicky’s hand and kissed the palm.

Nicky closed his eyes instinctively and hummed. “I love you, too.” 

Joe replied,

**_“How blind bright sun with such runes sat this sweet,_ **

**_how mild bold sun with shy boons at his feet!_ **

****

**_How yields strong sun to quicksilver a touch,_ **

**_soft opaline song which croons at his feet!_ **

****

**_How wields skilled sun so reflected a love,_ **

**_compounded joy which balloons at his feet!_ **

****

**_How rumbles loud sun at argent caress_ **

**_infused with mettle which swoons at his feet!_ **

****

**_How humbles proud sun’s golden blaze_ **

**_when so grand an orb attunes at his feet!_ **

****

**_How am I, simple Joe, yet held more dear_ **

**_than a sun with all the moons at his feet!”_ **

****

Nicky opened his eyes mid-way through the recitation and realised that Joe was reading from the memo app on his phone. He listened intently, watching Joe’s mouth form the words.

“I thought you were texting Booker. But you were writing a poem. For me.”

“One beautiful act of devotion ought to inspire another, my love.”


	6. Smoldering. (Shotgunning)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky finds an old photo of Joe. Shotgunning cigarette smoke.
> 
> For Kinktober 2020: Day 12: Shotgunning

“Nicky?”

“Yeah. Here.”

In the back of Nicky’s mind sprung the notion that he ought to be embarrassed, ashamed, at the very least, uncomfortable about what was about to happen.

But he wasn’t. He was too far gone.

“Where are you? Are you okay? Why are all the lights out? Oh.”

Joe stopped in the doorway.

Nicky was sitting on the floor, naked from the waist down with his fist round his cock.

He looked up.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi, yourself,” answered Joe. “What, uh, brought this on?”

Nicky let the photograph go; it slipped from his knee to the floor with a swishing sound.

“Oh.” Joe’s eyebrows rose. So did one corner of his mouth. “That one.” 

A bright moon shone beyond the heavy curtain. A gap in the dark fabric allowed a thin sliver of iridescent light to penetrate the room; it lit Joe’s profile like a black-and-white photograph.

A sexy, sexy black-and-white photograph.

Like the one on the floor.

“Joe.”

“Hold on. Don’t come yet.”

* * *

Nicky made a noise of protest, but he willed his fist to stop.

A minute later, Joe was calling from beyond the door.

“Close your eyes.” 

Nicky closed his eyes.

“All right. Open them.”

And there was Joe.

He was standing naked with his legs crossed one in front of the other. His hair was nicely but hurriedly tousled. He was looking down and cupping his hands to light the cigarette he was holding between his lips.

“Oh, fuck,” breathed Nicky. He fixed his eyes on the fantasy made flesh and resumed his hard, fast pumping. “Oh, fuck, Joe. Santa Madre di Dio. So hot, so gorgeous, so,” Nicky tore his eyes away and looked at the ceiling, pinching his eyes closed as if it hurt; his head lolled against the wall, “smoking,” he huffed self-consciously, “sorry, I couldn’t help myself, I couldn’t even wait for you to come home...”

“Come,” ordered Joe as he flicked the lighter, which made a snick of a sound and a spark.

And made Nicky make a mess of himself.

“Joe.”

Nicky heard the lighter hit the floor.

“Look at me.”

Nicky looked.

With the cigarette between his lips, Joe approached Nicky, then steadied the cigarette between two fingers.

Nicky watched Joe inhale. Then he watched Joe sink slowly to one knee and lean in.

Instinctively, Nicky opened his mouth as if awaiting a sloppy, wet kiss. Joe released a puff of smoke from his lips, and Nicky took it into himself.

Nicky’s head was swimming. He exhaled and tried to explain, “I just came across it, and I was…”

Joe shushed him and took another drag on the cigarette.

Nicky watched, completely mesmerized, then opened his mouth again and took that puff, too.

Just like I take my own come sometimes, Nicky thought, sometimes when he sucks me off. He holds it in his mouth and feeds it to me.

“Yeah, I was thinking about that, too,” said Joe, reading Nicky’s mind. “I was thinking how I’d like you on your knees, how I’d like to finish this cigarette while you suck me off, and how I’d like you give me mine back just like this. Just. Like. This.”

“Yeah,” said Nicky. “Let’s do that.”

Joe passed Nicky another cloud of smoke. Then he reached down and bundled Nicky up in his arms. He carried him to the bed and sat and let Nicky slide to the floor, pulling Nicky’s shirt off in the process.

Nicky was on his knees, looking up, and shaking his head as Joe grinned round the cigarette between his lips. 


	7. Weak in the Knees. (Body Worship)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe spoils Nicky. Oral. Multiple orgasms. 
> 
> For the 2020 Kinktober Day 13: Body worship.

A voice cut through the hubbub of the market.

“What are you thinking of, habibi?”

Nicky didn’t look up. “The secret of your beauty and the mystery of your soul.”

“Whew!” Joe makes a show of wiping his brow in relief. “And here I thought I had a rival for your affections in that artichoke you’re holding.”

“The spiral of an artichoke’s leaves can be described by the Fibonacci Sequence and represented by a group of golden rectangles called a Fibonacci Spiral. In an artichoke, there are multiples of these spirals. The leaves are produced by the plant lacking a certain hormone every 137.5 degrees, which is the Golden Angle. Golden rectangles, golden angles, like your golden smile, like your golden skin when kissed by the afternoon light, like the golden warmth that shines from your eyes. It’s beautiful like you are beautiful, and also a mystery like you are a mystery. How could so much love be contained in one vessel?”

“Hayati…” Joe leaned into Nicky, his eyes dark and wanting. Then he pulled back, his hand on Nicky’s sleeve, and scanned their environs. They were terribly exposed in this market. Not a single nook or cranny in sight. Not a rail, a fence, gait or door they could make quick use of as a blind. Joe made a noise of frustration and leaned back in and dropped his voice to a whisper only Nicky could hear.

“Okay, tonight, after dinner,” Joe promised in a strained voice, “I am going to _worship_ you. I am going to peel every single part of you away, just like that artichoke, and kiss it, kiss you ‘til you’re faint, from the top of your head to—what?”

Nicky was frowning. “I was planning on worshiping _you_ tonight.”

Joe’s eyes widened, and the phrase ‘fuck your plans’ hovered on his tongue, but he said, “You. Tomorrow. Me. Tonight. Now buy the damn artichokes.”

And then he stalked off, leaving Nicky smiling fondly after him.

* * *

Anyone could fuck a husband twice in one night. The third orgasm was Joe’s charm and his signature. The first was a simple hand job to take the edge off. Not much in that but ruthless efficiency. The second, the proper assault, involved repeatedly pulling Nicky’s head back by the roots of his hair as Joe rutted atop him, cocks slipping and sliding sloppily against one another as Joe recited a few choice snatches of thirteen century Sufi poetry mixed with some 1980’s glam rock lyrics to which Nicky was especially partial.

The second orgasm also resulted from Joe giving full and expert attention to that spot on the right side of Nicky’s neck and the strip of skin between Nicky’s balls and ass as well as Nicky’s bottom lip, which never stayed bruised or bothered as long as Joe, or certain Renaissance artists, would’ve liked. It involved easing Nicky onto his stomach and biting his buttocks and his shoulders and revisiting that spot on his neck and its counterpart on the left side. It involved covering Nicky’s body with his own and rutting some more, with slightly coarser epitaphs dropped onto sweat damp skin.

That Joe himself came from sliding his cock between Nicky’s slicked thighs during this period was a footnote in the whole affair, forgotten by Joe but necessary so that any anxiety on Nicky’s part about being a selfish lover was forestalled before it could ruin all of Joe’s plans.

After the second round, sex was in the air, which was good. Nicky was sensitive to the miasma. He was damp and spent and disheveled and raw and pliant. Joe cleaned him tenderly and posed him like a mannequin.

“Nicky?”

“I love you.” Nicky was on his side, eyes closed, features lax and peaceful.

“And I love you. Can you take more?”

One corner of Nicky’s mouth twitched and a sly eye cracked and looked Joe’s way. “I believe we have established that I can take whatever you can dish out, beloved.”

Perfect.

“I love you.” Joe kissed Nicky’s wrist. “I love you.” Joe kissed the inside of Nicky’s elbow. “I love you.” Joe kissed the shell of Nicky’s ear and nuzzled behind it gently with his ear. “I love you.”

“Oh, Joe!” groaned Nicky. He rolled into covers and buried his face. “You aren’t going to do _that_!” His voice was muffled. One of his hands flailed, and Joe caught it in his own as he pressed tiny kisses up Nicky’s spine.

“I’m worshiping you, my love.”

Joe snaked his hands under Nicky. “Oh, already, hayati?” Nicky’s nipples were swollen and hard, but that didn’t stop Joe from teasing them further.

“I know, I know, oh.” Nicky’s voice hitched as Joe pinched. A delicious shiver run through Nicky’s body. “I might start weeping—but they’re good tears.”

Good tears were a very good sign in Joe’s opinion. Let the rivers run.

Joe slid back down, the better to kiss up and down Nicky’s sides, following the undulations of his ribs.

For a while, Joe’s hands were everywhere, caressing Nicky’s hair, his shoulders, his lower back, his arse.

Then he dropped suddenly much farther down Nicky’s body, pausing to lick his lips before pressing them to the back of Nicky’s left knee.

“JOE!”

In an instant, Joe had Nicky’s legs pinned to the bed. While he licked the back of one knee, he rubbed the back of the other with a hard thumb. Then he switched. He licked and he rubbed, and he rubbed and he licked. He bit, too. He did not let up. Not when Nicky’s whimpers turned to whines. Not when whines turned to sobs.

Joe can still remember the thrill of discovering this tender spot on his lover’s body. He can still remember Nicky’s protest.

“Don’t do it often, please!”

Yusuf had been confounded, especially when the act had released an unprecedented flood of moans and endearments.

“Why would I deny you such pleasure, my love? Or deny myself the pleasure of seeing you adored and cherished in the body’s ways as much as you are in the heart’s?”

“I don’t deserve it!”

“That’s utter nonsense.”

“Oh, how to explain? It feels,” Nicolò’s voice fell to a breath, “holy.”

“Yes, it is holy. I’m worshipping you.” Joe harrumphed. “Make certain you cry out for me and not your God or I might thrash you to death out of spite and jealousy,” he lied, knowing his days of raising a hand to this man in anger were ancient history. He held Nicolò’s head and his gaze and growled, “The source of your ecstasy is me and my devotion, do you understand?” 

Nicolò had whimpered then.

Nicky was whimpering now.

Joe felt the tension mount in his lover’s body. Nicky was attempting to raise his upper body and bear down with his lower body and rut.

Joe slid up and whispers in his ear.

“You wouldn’t waste that bitter-sweetness, would you, ya qamar? You wouldn’t throw it away, use it to dirty some sheets, when it’s meant to bless the back of my throat.”

Nicky turned his head until their foreheads touched. “Be gentle, Joe.”

“Like the bee draws its nectar, petals.”

The tears started afresh. 

As Joe rolled Nicky, Nicky threw his arm over his eyes in a futile attempt to hide the tears whose damp trails line the sides of his face.

Joe grinned at Nicky’s cock, leaking for the third time. 

“Good tears, indeed,” he said before he took Nicky’s cock in his mouth. The gentle touch of his tongue was all that was required.

“JOE!” 

As soon as Joe had pulled off, Nicky was on him, limbs tied round him, his face hidden in the crook of his neck. He was mumbling something that sounded like a hushed and grateful prayer.


	8. A Room with a View. (Frottage)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky and Joe decide to spend a weekend in the city. Frottage. Come in pants.
> 
> For Kinktober 2020 Day 13: Frottage.

“Why?” asked Nicky. His elbows rested on the edge of the stone balcony railing. He was bent forward, looking out at a breath-taking view of the city. 

Joe stepped out onto the balcony.

“Five days, love.”

“But you don’t begrudge me helping Amira, do you?”

“Not at all. She is a new grandmother. She ought to be with her family and not tending that old bookshop, but helping her has meant that for five days you leave early and come back late and very tired after sorting all those dusty books and a bit cranky with dealing with customers. I thought a change would be as good as a rest.”

Nicky smiled and nodded. “Holiday within a holiday. Vacation within a vacation. A few days of city life for us country cottage mice.”

“And you’ll have a shorter commute to the bookshop on Monday.” Joe hummed and moved closer. “Just stay right there, love. Don’t move.” Joe’s pressed his clothed erection into the cleft of Nicky’s clothed ass, then he began to rub. “Is this all right, love?”

The stone railing hid their lower halves from view. 

“From a public decency standpoint, yeah, but I am just supposed to pretend nothing’s happening back there?” asked Nicky without turning around.

“Precisely. I know it’s only been five days, but I missed you so much, hayati. I saw you standing here from below when I arrived, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to wait. So beautiful. Any view, of course. But especially this one with the cityscape and the water. It’s like a postcard.”

“A postcard you want to fuck yourself against,” said Nicky with a smirk.

Joe laughed and gripped Nicky’s hips. “Yes. A postcard I’m fucking myself against right now with that postcard’s permission.”

The grinding continued, and a thought struck Nicky.

“I’m not clean,” he said hastily and apologetically. “Your message caught me by surprise. I only had time to throw a few things in a bag.”

“I’m not asking to fuck your ass, love. This is all I need, I promise.”

“You mean you want to come on my trousers?”

“No, love.”

“You want to come in your clothes?”

Joe wheezed. “You make a nine-hundred-year-old man spend in his shorts like a schoolboy.”

Nicky smiled a half-smile and stuck his ass out a bit farther. “Please yourself, then.”

“Oh, yes,” moaned Joe. “This is pleasing me very much. You have no idea.”

“I have _some_ idea.” Nicky watched the city below. A minute passed and he asked,

“Can we go dancing tonight, Joe?”

The rubbing stopped abruptly. “Yeah, yeah. Like clubbing?”

“Yeah. Your rubbing is catching. I want to rub, too. Tight and hot. Sweaty. Maybe up against a wall. Or, you know, in a crowd.”

“Oh, Nicky.”

One sharp buck. One sharp groan.

Joe’s body stilled and then relaxed.

“That was perfect, love. Just what I needed. Thank you.”

Nicky felt lips on his shoulder.

“Out of curiosity, just how many pairs of trousers did you bring, Joe?”

“Uh, three.”

Nicky turned and ran a hand down the front of Joe’s trousers, caressing the damp fabric. “Think I can make you come in all of them tonight?” Nicky fixed Joe with a look that said he wanted to try.

Joe’s eyes went wide, then dark, the slightly glassy. He licked his lips and nodded. Then, obviously trying to regain his cool, he countered, “And just how many pairs of trousers did you bring, habibi albi?”

“Oh, just these,” Nicky kissed the round tip of his beloved’s nose, “and the black leather ones that make you silly.”


	9. Dogs Together. (Armpits)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicky likes to nuzzle. 
> 
> For 2020 Kinktober Day 15: Armpits.

Joe woke to the cold touch to the centre of his armpit and smiled a sleepy, lover’s smile. In the liminal space between slumber and wakefulness, his thoughts slipped easily back in time to the first time he’d felt that particular touch.

He’d flinched then. He’d grunted, too, but he’d held Nicky, then Nicolò, close, and Nicky, for his part, had burrowed deeper and hummed contentedly.

Joe, then Yusuf, had been learning his lover’s ways for the first time. Sometime during the night, Nicolò had rolled to face Yusuf and then inched his way down Yusuf’s body. First his head had been at Yusuf’s chest and then his face had rolled to Yusuf’s side.

Then the nose.

Like that, eh? Yusuf thought.

The initial cold was swallowed by the heat of Yusuf’s body.

As the minutes passed, Yusuf found he liked the nuzzling and the snuffling.

It was…sweet?

Yusuf’s heart warmed. He kept his body purposefully still, allowing Nicolò to do whatever his desire bid.

And what Nicolò had wanted, apparently, was more. He’d tilted his head back and began to lick, lick hungrily at Yusuf’s skin and hair and sweat and scent.

That was…not sweet.

That was, Yusuf realized by the want pooling in his groin, something entirely different.

It wouldn’t be the first time he’d had a morning erection with Nicolò in the bed but, somehow, this one embarrassed him. Nicolò was being playful, affectionate, loving, and here Yusuf was getting stiff like a street cur.

Nicolò pushed his nose back into Yusuf’s armpit and snorted.

Yusuf chuckled a bit too loud for the quiet morning.

Nicolò started. “Hm? What? Huh?” He made another series of noises. “Oh, oh…” He looked up, his beautiful sea blue-green eyes wide and his beautiful mouth open and his face red. He scowled, launched into a litany of apologies in a variety of tongues, and made to jerk away from Yusuf.

But Yusuf caught him.

Nicolò protested and spat a word.

“Dog.”

The word hit like a blow to the chest. That’s what Yusuf had called Nicolò, among other more colorful epitaphs, when they’d still been trying to kill each other.

Yusuf caught Nicolò’s hand in his and brought the hand to his own half-hard prick.

Nicolò’s eyes had gone wide again.

“Dog,” said Yusuf with a sheepish smile. “I like it. Let’s be dogs together.”

Nicolò’s gaze had danced over Yusuf’s features and finally a smile had unfurled, a genuine, full, lover’s smile.

Nicolò threw himself into Yusuf’s embrace and then morning had been a beautiful one. Joe had difficulty remembering the details, but the memory of it made him smile, just as did Nicky impossibly cold nose tucked under his arm this morning. 

He was breathing in Joe’s musk, nuzzling into his warmth, caressing him in a most tender, and largely forgotten, spot of his body.

Yusuf had had a long time to ponder it, and he decided it was something primitive about it, his mate needing the reassurance of his scent. The fact that Nicky only did it when he himself was half awake and half asleep seemed, to Yusuf, to strengthen this supposition.

There it came.

The nuzzling. The nosing. The sniffing.

Joe couldn’t help it. He was getting hard.

By the time, Nicky started to lick, he’d be at full mast.

He wondered where the lube from the previous night was and if he could reach it. He might slick himself a nice, tight spot between Nicky’s thighs and…

Yusuf felt the bottle being pressed into his palm.

“Let’s be dogs together,” murmured Nicky into Yusuf’s armpit. 


	10. Nice and Toasty. (Cock warming)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If anyone had ever asked Nicky about it, he would’ve said that it was a selfish thing regardless of which end he was on. Cock warming. Anal. Masturbation. Showering.
> 
> So this is continuing with the 'weekend at hotel in Valleta' setting with some flashbacks to the cottage.
> 
> For Kinktober Day 19: Cock warming.

The spray of the shower was as hot and hard as the pipes could provide.

“You could, you know, warm me up, later, if you wanted, if it works out.”

“Yeah, sure, I want to, if it works out.”

Joe leaned into Nicky’s scratching fingers. Nicky was working a foul-smelling but wonder-working cream into Joe’s curls, along the roots of Joe scalp. Joe was distractedly soaping and rinsing, soaping and rinsing, Nicky’s neck and torso and arms. Distractedly because Nicky’s fingers were damn distracting.

The grime and stench of the night was sliding from their bodies down the drain. The sweat, the smoke, the lube, the sex, the spilled drinks, the spent cocks, the grease and spice from the midnight meals in the street, even a fleck or two of transferred glitter, perfume, and lipstick, all swirled and disappeared at their feet.

Dawn was approaching, and sleep was calling.

They’d spent the night going from club to bar to café with stops in between for dark-corner fumbling and side-street coupling. They’d even made a detour back to the hotel for Joe to change his trousers. Twice. 

Warm me up later.

Joe understood Nicky’s cryptic request. Joe, too, didn’t want the hedonism of the night to end—even though their bodies were crying out for rest and they were teetering on the brink of physical collapse. The novelty of the hotel room played a part, too, Joe thought, in Nicky’s request. It was a holiday within a holiday, a vacation within a vacation. They were in Malta, but they weren’t at the cottage. They weren’t _home_. Or on a job. That meant they could make an exception to their usual sleeping arrangements.

I want to, if it works out.

‘If it works out’ was not a trite phrase. It was necessary caveat. Joe was a much heavier sleeper than Nicky, and the probability that he could wake up first, even if he wanted to, even if he had a very delicious reason to, was not high.

The spirit was willing, but the flesh was weak.

Joe turned around and leaned backwards, allowing Nicky to guide the rinsing water through his thick curls. The cream smelled horrid going on, it was a handmade preparation Joe had picked up in the market, a mixture of butters and fats, animal, vegetable, and mineral, he thought, but it made his hair so soft afterward that neither he nor Nicky minded the brief assault to the olfactory sense. It was Nicky who had remembered to pack it for this jaunt to the city, and Joe was thankful for that.

“Not so bad once it’s rinsed out,” said Joe like clockwork. He always said that when Nicky was done.

“Not so bad,” agreed Nicky. He yawned.

Joe turned off the taps. “Let’s sleep, habibi.”

They dried off and dove into bed, one after the other, sliding atop the sheets. Neither had even bothered to pack pajamas.

* * *

Joe woke some hours later to soft telltale snoring and was struck by the sudden, joyful realization that his lover was still sleeping.

They were not in their usual positions. It was more nap than proper slumber but ideal for Joe’s purpose. He deftly scooted down the bed, adjusted himself in a pose he could hold for some time, and took Nicky’s flaccid cock in his mouth.

Joe settled himself mentally as well as physically while his thoughts wandered, unhelpfully, to the last time he’d ‘warmed up’ Nicky.

That time, Joe had been sitting on the floor in the sitting room of the cottage, and Nicky was stretched along the length of the sofa. Joe had been watching a game, and Nicky hadn’t been doing much of anything.

Nicky had shivered, and Joe had gotten to his feet and, without taking his eyes from the screen, found a blanket and draped it along Nicky’s lower half.

“Thank you, my love.”

“Anything else?”

Something had made Joe look away from the game, and when he turned his head, he understood it was the heat from Nicky’s gaze. There was movement beneath the blanket, and Joe saw Nicky’s shorts and underpants slip to the floor.

“Keep my cock warm during halftime?”

Joe’s eyebrows had jumped, and his lips had curled into a smile. “You want me to wake you up first?”

“No.”

“Nicky…”

But then the announcer on the TV was crying “Goal!” and Joe turned his attention back to the game.

That time, Joe had kept his head beneath the blanket.

The exquisite intimacy of the act and the depth of trust it demonstrated touched Joe at his core, but he only thought it about before or after the act so as not to distract or overwhelm himself. While he warmed Nicky’s cock, he tried not to move his mouth. He tried to swallow as unobtrusively as possible until Nicky began to wake.

The time on the sofa had been a short doze. Nicky had woke to humming ‘So good’ and Joe’s name, chanting the litany over and over.

When Nicky’s cock had stiffened in Joe’s mouth, Joe’d responded by sucking gently.

“Oh, yes,” groaned Nicky. His hips had rolled. “Don’t stop. More.”

Joe had begun to suck in earnest. He’d felt a hand on his head through the blanket.

“Your mouth, Joe, your mouth. Warm. Perfect.”

The warmth in Nicky’s voice had been, Joe thought, also perfect. He’d brought Nicky off and then found himself hard enough to beg for Nicky’s ass. He’d got it, as it turned out, without saying a word. Nicky had just turned over and lifted his hindquarters and murmured,

“Please. Fuck me. Need you. Inside.”

It’d been a nice, slow fuck on the sofa, and thinking about that nice, slow fuck on the cottage sofa made the hotel bed in Valleta very hot.

Luckily, Joe’d had the forethought to put the lube within reach.

Still holding Nicky’s cock in his mouth, Joe slicked his palm and began to stroke himself.

“Joe?”

Joe grunted.

“Can’t wait, hmm?”

The huskiness in Nicky’s voice said he liked that thought a lot, and the stiffening cock in Joe’s mouth confirmed it.

Surrendering to impatience, Joe snorted noisily and pumped his cock harder.

“Oh, yes, come for me, baby! So nice to wake up in your mouth. I love it. Warm. Perfect. My Joe. Oh, your hair, Joe. Oh, baby!”

Nicky’s hand was gripping Joe by the hair, and Joe was spending on the sheets.

Then Joe planted his palms on the bed and went to town on Nicky’s cock.

“FUCK!”

* * *

If anyone had ever asked Nicky about it, he would’ve said that it was a selfish thing regardless of which end he was on. When he woke to Joe’s mouth warming his cock, it was bliss, and when he spent the day with Joe’s cock in his own mouth, it was also bliss, albeit a different kind of bliss.

Nicky’s body remembered the erotic dreams he’d had of Joe before they’d met, and when Nicky surfaced from sleep, now, nine hundred years later, to find his member in Joe’s mouth, well, it was a blending of age-old fantasy and reality. It never lasted long. It was too good. Nicky wanted to spend before he even opened his eyes, and it usually set off a domino chain of fucking and being fucked that could last for hours or even days.

But when Nicky was on the other end, when he was holding Joe’s cock, it was different.

“Any plans today? Going out?”

Nicky shook his head.

“Do you want to keep me warm today?” Joe wasn’t looking at him, wasn’t even in the same side of the sitting room as Nicky. Space. Joe always gave Nicky space to say ‘no.’

But Nicky didn’t want to say ‘no.’ Not to this.

“Yes.”

Then the warm brown eyes were on him and there was that casual jerk of the head and that honey smile, and it was all Nicky could do to fall to his knees right there.

But, no, there was a little prep work for things to flow smoothly. Too much hunting and arranging would break the spell. Cushions were gathered. Breakfast was made and consumed. Quick separate showers were taken.

Joe’s supplies were collected, art materials, books, the TV remote control, phone, snacks, drinks, all of it gathered and placed within arm’s reach. 

Then.

“Oh, oh,” moaned Nicky under his breath when he was on his knees on a cushion and Joe’s cock was out. “Joe.”

“Keep me warm, hayati.”

Nicky closed his eyes and opened his mouth and, with Joe’s hand on the back of his head, took Joe’s cock in his mouth.

Nicky floated. His anchor to the world was lying unquivering on his tongue. The rest of him was gone. He might have heard the scratching of pencils on paper. He might have heard the buzz of television. He might have heard the crinkling of a bag being opened and noisy crunching. 

“So good for me, Nicky. So good.”

Nicky’s head was being petted and stroked. His hair was being smoothed. He was being scratched lightly behind the ears.

“I love you, Nicky. The way you look right now, your expression, your face. It’s, uh, I don’t have words, me, who has a word for everything, I don’t know what to call it.” 

Nicky didn’t know what Joe got out of the bargain. It couldn’t be as pure and otherworldly as what Nicky enjoyed. To be still, to be completely still, and yet tethered to Joe in this way, in this private, together way.

“Nicky, come back to me.”

The caresses were a bit rougher. The hand didn’t just touch Nicky, it jostled him, gently, tenderly, but firmly.

Nicky opened his eyes and was surprised to see dusk had fallen.

At some point, Joe had lit a candle.

“Stay right there,” said Joe as he slipped his cock out of Nicky’s mouth.

Nicky swallowed. His mouth felt empty. Too empty. Abandoned. He heard a plaintive whine, which he realized a moment later, was escaping from his own lips.

“Okay, never mind, I can wait.” There were strong arms around Nicky. “You did so good, love. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Love,” said Nicky.

A soft, earthy chuckle. A sigh. A pair of lips pressed flat and hard to Nicky’s temple.

Nicky was surfacing, enough to remember gratitude.

“Thank you, Joe.”

“Thank you, love.”

* * *

“FUCK!”

Nicky drew his cock from Joe’s mouth just before he spent his load down Joe’s throat. He got up on his knees, his erect cock jutting.

“I want to fuck, Joe.”

“That’s what we’re doing, love,” said Joe with a wave at his own release decorating the sheets. “That’s what we’ve been doing all night.”

“Waking up to your mouth.” Nicky ended the statement with a groan. He gripped his own cock, and Joe tossed him the bottle of lube. He slicked his hand and began to jerk himself off as he talked.

“What do you get out of it? That. This. Waking up with my cock in your mouth.”

“It’s hot. Sucking you off is always hot.”

“Do you float?”

“Float?”

“Does your mind drift to other places?”

“Nah, I stay right with you. This time, though, I might’ve thought a little bit about that time on the sofa, when I was watching the PSG match.”

“You fucked me after that.” Now Nicky was leaning back on the pillows with two fingers shoved up his ass as he pumped his cock. “Right. Here.”

“I’ll do it again. Give me a few minutes,” growled Joe, his dark eyes on Nicky’s hole. “You know why I like warming your cock, love? Do you know why I’m ready to do it whenever you ask?”

Nicky shook his head. His eyes were pinched, and he was close to the edge.

“Because it means you are in the mood to be one horny bastard, and I’m right there with you.”

Nicky licked his lips. “Joe!”


	11. Green Eyes. (Exhibitionism)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a cat following Joe and Nicky on club night in Valleta. Public sex. POV Joe. 
> 
> For Kinktober 2020 Day 21: Exhibitionism/voyeurism.

It was dark but not late when Joe pushed Nicky into the shadows and up against the stone wall in Valleta. They’d left their second bar of the night after one drink. The mood of the establishment was too much forced cheerfulness for their taste, and Joe was eager to ruin the inside of his trousers.

Joe let his hand, which was cupped around Nicky’s neck, slide across Nicky’s collarbone and dip to brush Nicky’s chest. His fingers slipped beneath the fabric of Nicky’s shirt to rub a nipple, not in a provocative way, more in a knowing, possessive, nobody’s looking way.

_I know you like this. I know you like me doing this to you. We’ve got all night._

Nicky pressed a wet, baby, as in ‘I’m your baby,’ kiss to the part of Joe’s cheek that wasn’t beard.

Joe knew that his slow rut against Nicky’s hipbone was fine by both of them.

 _Take what you need, tesoro_.

That’s what Nicky’s body was saying as clearly as if Nicky had said the words out loud, which he would, Joe was certain, before the sun rose. 

And because in all centuries including this one, Nicky couldn’t care less what he wore, Joe had picked out Nicky’s shirt for the evening. The shirt had snaps, the utility of which had not been lost on Joe when he asked Nicky to wear it.

Joe pulled the sides of Nicky’s shirt apart, and three snaps popped, giving Joe more bare skin to caress while he sucked fleeting bruises into the side of Nicky’s neck and rubbed his clothed cock against Nicky’s crotch.

Joe snaked his free arm around Nicky’s waist. At first, his hand was between Nicky and the wall, but very soon it was between Nicky’s ass and Nicky’s jeans.

Joe’s fingers detected no underclothing of any kind. It meant Nicky want to be, planned to be, fondled, touched, teased. The thought made Joe’s cock even stiffer.

“Gorgeous,” he murmured against Nicky’s neck. He meant the nice plump ass he was groping, but he wouldn’t protest if Nicky had a different interpretation. Nicky had a lot of gorgeous parts, and Joe hoped to fuck all of them before dawn.

“Sexy,” responded Nicky. “Look at this sexy man taking leave of his senses in the street.” He wove a hand between their bodies and rubbed the front of Joe’s trousers with his palm and hummed. “All for me?”

“You know it, hayati.”

Joe did feel as if he’d taken leave of his senses. He was raw, like a beast in rut, but there was only one who would satisfy him, only one he wanted. He truly didn’t care if he made a fool of himself for Nicky. He wanted nothing more than to wander round the city, through the night, fucking his beloved against every hard surface the stone town presented, until their bodies surrendered to the need for sleep. Or he’d run out of clean trousers.

“Nicky.”

Joe had been toying with Nicky’s other nipple, but he decided to lean into Nicky and move the hand caressing the front of Nicky down and at an angle, eventually sliding between Nicky’s clothes and Nicky’s skin, ‘til his fingertips grazed Nicky’s hipbone.

“Ugh!”

Both of Joe’s hands were now in Nicky’s pants, one in the front, one in back, and his body was between them, rutting and rubbing and seeking the final bit of friction which would set him off.

Nicky gave the bulge of Joe’s cock a gentle squeeze and whispered, “That’s going to feel so good inside me later,” before placing both hands on Joe’s shoulders.

And that was all Joe needed.

“Mmpfgh!”

“Joe.”

Joe froze, then instinctively put himself between Nicky and the world before saying, “What’s wrong?”

“Someone’s watching.”

Joe felt the tension in Nicky’s body. He could almost hear Nicky’s heartbeat quicken. He looked over his shoulder, bracing himself for the worst.

“Where?”

“There.”

Joe tried to follow Nicky’s gaze. “I don’t see—”

Suddenly, the headlight of a motorbike swept the other side of the short, narrow side street.

Joe pressed Nicky tight to the wall, but he kept his eyes peeled. Then he relaxed and chuckled.

“It’s a cat.”

Joe felt Nicky relax, the vibrate with mirth.

“Sorry, love. I felt eyes on us.”

“They’re pretty eyes, green, but not as pretty as yours. An all-grey cat with a kink in its tail. Looks like a little smoke-colored lion.”

“Can you tell if it’s a voyeur or a censor?”

“It’s probably both. C’mon. Let’s make a detour by the hotel so I can change my pants.”

* * *

“You’re obscene, Nicky.”

“Says the man opening his trousers in a dirty alley so I can drop to my knees and suck his cock.”

Joe was, indeed, opening his trousers and freeing his erection and biting back a groan when Nicky fell to his knees and Nicky’s mouth enveloped his throbbing cock.

“What can I do, habibi, when you order every sausage on the, admittedly, limited menu and eat them like, oh, oh, love, like that and rub me under the table while you talking about such filthy things, like sucking my meat out of the casing? Oh, fuck.” Joe looked around. They were alone and it was dark, but it wouldn’t do to get too loud. “I’m going to be quiet, love, but know I’m loving it, I’m loving your mouth, your stretched lips, everything you do, your dirty tongue.”

Joe leaned back against the waist-high stone parapet and cradled Nicky’s head in both hands. He rubbed Nicky’s cheeks and felt their distention as Nicky took his prick in his warm, hot, tight, perfect mouth. He rubbed Nicky’s jaw, brushed his sides of Nicky’s face with his knuckles, smoothed Nicky’s hair.

That was the only drawback to doing it like this was that Joe couldn’t be as loud as he wanted. He couldn’t literally sing Nicky’s praises.

Joe called Nicky dirty, but he felt dirty himself, too. He might have been a john, a punter, a horny tourist, paying for a bit of holiday pleasuring out in the open, but this pleasure, though priceless, was Joe’s alone. No one in the whole fucking island was getting a cock sucked like this. Centuries of experimenting and customizing and practicing. Nicky’s lips, Nicky’s tongue, Nicky’s everything, knew every vein, every wrinkle, every hair on Joe’s cock.

Nicky took Joe deeper and sucked him harder, and Joe’s body responded.

_That’s my baby. That’s my paradise on this earth._

Joe’s only warning, pathetic as it was, was a tightened grip on Nicky’s hair.

Nicky swallowed and wiped his mouth and accepted Joe’s hand as he got to his feet.

Joe kissed Nicky’s mouth and tasted his own sex. He pushed his tongue in Nicky’s mouth licking at the traces of his release. Nicky let Joe suck at his bottom lip until it bruised.

Joe wrapped Nicky in his arms and fed him the desperation in his blood, need that sounded like:

_I’m insatiable tonight. I simply can’t get enough of you. You’ve sucked me dry, and as irrational as it is, I can’t help thinking I’d give my life to be able to bend you over this wall right now and sink my cock into your ass._

Joe turned them without breaking the kiss, pushing Nicky slightly against the stone half-wall.

Joe smiled as he pulled away. He brushed Nicky’s hair back from his face and was selecting from the library of memory the perfect line of verse to praise his lover when something caught his eye.

Or rather, somethings.

A pair of green eyes.

“Nicky.”

Farther along the ancient stone parapet, at the point where it climbed to above Joe and Nicky’s height, was perched a cat.

“It’s looking at us, Joe.”

“Yeah, seems like it.”

“I’m not afraid.”

“I should hope not.”

“Is it the same cat as before?”

“I don’t know.”

Nicky pressed a smile against Joe’s neck. “Take me dancing, Joe.”

* * *

They went to the most packed place they could find, the better to press their bodies together and move together and let their sweat drip on one another.

Joe had his lips plastered to the shell of Nicky’s ear as they danced. He wasn’t certain Nicky could hear everything he said over the pounding of the music, but he said it anyway.

“You have a selfish lover, habibi, one who doesn’t deserve you. You’re going to come however you want. On me. In me. However.”

Nicky had simply rubbed his thumb across Joe’s lip and smiled.

Nicky came without a word. His face was the ecstatic agony found in a portrait of Saint Sebastian bathed in the ghastly grey florescent light of a club restroom. His head was thrown back against the grimy stall wall. His eyes were closed, his mouth was open. His shirt was open, too. His bare chest on display and heaving. His pebbled nipples wet with Joe’s saliva but showing no signs of the biting.

Joe was insanely reluctant to pull off Nicky’s cock even after he’d swallowed Nicky’s come. The only thing that jerked him from his nuzzling and nosing and burrowing in Nicky’s public hair was the sound of the door to the gents being wrenched open and the pumping of the music drifting in.

“Hey, there’s a cat!”

Nicky and Joe looked down; a flash of grey zipped round their feet and disappeared.

“Hey, kitty, kitty, where are you? There you are! Hey, where are you going? Come back!”

Nicky and Joe took advantage of the distraction to set themselves to rights and leave as surreptitiously as could be managed. They returned to the dance floor.

Joe didn’t think they could’ve danced any closer, but they did. It was like they were wearing each other’s skin, moving as one, sweating as one. Joe mouthed dirty tributes to Nicky’s ass into Nicky’s shoulder or Nicky’s arm or Nicky’s neck, wherever his lips could reach. He didn’t think Nicky had registered any of what he said until, at a rare pause in the din, he whined in Joe’s ear.

“Yes Fill me. Please. Joe.” 

They left the club minutes after that, their ears still ringing as they ate pastizzi and hobz biz-zejt and more obscene sausage, washing it all down with Cisk.

Joe dragged Nicky all the way to a dark nook by the water, where the only sounds were the crash of tide and the clumsy knocking of boats.

“Nicky, I need you.”

“Take what you need, tesoro.”

There was some privacy here, enough for Nicky to drop his jeans, bend over a large driftwood trunk, and bare himself to Joe’s hungry gaze.

What else could Joe do but eat him out then fuck him?

The noises Nicky made as Joe’s tongue wriggled inside him might have been gulls’ cries. They were high-pitched and insistent enough, but when Joe actually lined up his slicked, condom-covered cock at Nicky’s rim and pushed in, the sounds changed to low, hollow, fuck-me moans. The kind of noises Joe _loved_. They were the noises of a man who would not be satisfied with tourists’ breadcrumbs and fishermen’s castoffs. He needed a nice, thick cock.

Joe’s cock.

When Joe was fully sheathed, Nicky’s hand flailed, and Joe caught it in his.

Nicky brought Joe’s fingers to his lips, and Joe read.

_Please. Joe. Slow and deep. Love me._

Joe smiled. These days, and really for the last, oh, eight hundred and some odd years, loving Nicky was the easy thing he did.

He pulled out and pushed in, giving it an extra jerk of the hips and a sharp, deep thrust after he’d bottomed out, which made Nicky whimper and mouth against Joe’s fingers.

_Like that. Love. More. Like that._

Joe fucked him like that. Filling him, stretching him, pounding into him. He released Nicky’s hand to grasp Nicky’s hips as his desire coiled.

Then he raised his gaze from Nicky’s body and his thoughts from Nicky’s love.

Green eyes were watching them.

The cat was perched on the bow of a boat. Its grey tail with the kink curled up by its leonine face.

Joe was too far gone.

_I don’t care if you watch. I don’t care if you scratch my eyes out. I love him. I want him. I won’t stop. He’s beautiful and mine, and I’m his. This is just one of the thousands of ways we love each other._

Joe spent and immediately fell forward and pulled out, looking down to tie off the condom.

“It’s the same cat,” said Nicky.

“Yeah.”

“I wonder if it’ll follow us back to the hotel.”

The short answer was yes.

The grey cat with the grey eyes and the kink in its tail was on the balcony of their second-floor room when they returned to the hotel.

Nicky, of course, had bought the cat some fish on the way back, which it was happily consuming on a unfolded piece of aluminum foil on the floor of the balcony while Joe and Nicky fucked, naked, in a nearby lounge chair.

In Joe’s opinion, the chair was made for this. It was oversized and sturdy and adjustable. The arms were low and unobtrusive.

Earlier that day, he and Nicky had shared a look about that chair that said that at some point, this is what they would be doing in it. 

Mouths were on cocks and slicked fingers were in arseholes, two for Joe, three for Nicky.

“Nicky?”

Joe’s voice was hoarse and faint. He sounded like he was talking from the bottom of a bottle.

“Mm?”

“Lick me and fuck me, please.”

It wasn’t something Joe usually asked for, but he felt the strange compulsion to show, to show, oh, Santa Madre di Dio, to show _the cat_ that he took Nicky up the ass and loved it.

So he did. And he did.

Nicky was maddeningly patient about rimming as he was about everything else, and eventually there were tears running down Joe’s face as he begged for Nicky’s cock.

But even as Joe blinked the tears away, he didn’t take his eyes off the cat’s eyes until Nicky was moaning his name.

Joe brought himself off with three strokes before Nicky even had raised his head from where it was nuzzling and licking his armpit.

“I’m done, Joe,” murmured Nicky.

“Yeah,” agreed Joe. “Shower, then bed.”

“I hope the cat’s not disappointed.”

Nicky lifted his head, Joe met his beautiful, earnest, mischievous blue-green gaze.

The smile was the smile of a tired, well-fucked, Genovese imp.

Joe loved him so.

But they both burst into peals of laughter so loud and boisterous that they startled the cat, who had been dutifully cleaning its paws.

It shot them the first disapproving glance of the night, and then, with the flick of his kinked tail, it was gone.

* * *

Two days later, they were back at the cottage in their own bed. A lovely morning breeze was causing the thin bedroom curtain to billow prettily.

Joe had been just about to mount a warm, open, naked Nicky, when Nicky stopped him with two words.

“The cat!”

Joe looked up.

The cat was, indeed, at their bedroom window.

“How in the hell did it find us?” asked Joe.

“Oh, Joe, I think it wants me to follow it.”

“What? No, hayati.”

But Nicky was already putting on whatever clothes were at hand, Joe’s clothes, and telling the cat in that crazy voice he thought, erroneously, was parseltongue.

“Show me, gattina, show me.”

And then Nicky, and the cat disappeared together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have in my head what happens with the cat but it's a spook story (not a kinky one).


	12. Up on the Roof. (Shower sex.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> From the roof, Joe watches Nicky in the outdoor shower. POV Nicky. 
> 
> For 2020 Kinktober Day 23: Shower sex.

What a difference a day made, thought Nicky. The night before a bad storm had swept through and done some damage to the roof of the cottage. The day had dawned fresh and bright and sunny, and Joe had done an inspection and determined what was needed in the way of repairs and materials.

Nicky was elated that Joe had refused his offer to accompany him to the hardware store. He did not want to swap stories with old men for hours. He wanted to go to the shore. So many interesting things washed up after a storm.

Nicky returned to the cottage with a bucket of curiosities, which he deposited outside the outdoor shower.

He turned on the water and peeled off his swimming trunks and began to rinse the sand and salt from his hair and body. Usually, he’d have left it at that, but there was a bar of homemade soap on the little ledge, and Nicky was, well, to be honest, rather foul from the previous night.

Nicky loved storms, loved smelling them, watching them, listening to them, and, as it turned out, being fucked through them.

He exhaled a long sigh and closed his eyes and leaned against the wall of the wooden stall, letting the water wash over him. He rubbed his face with his hand. He ran his hand over his whole body, paying attention to his armpits, his cock, his neck, his arse. He lathered the soap on his skin and scrubbed and rinsed.

Maybe when Joe returned from the store, but before he got down to work repairing things, he would have time for a quick fuck. Nicky smiled. He turned and put a hand on the wall and reached between his legs, behind himself, touching his rim gently.

No, Nicky decided, not a fucking, that was too much after last night, maybe just a mutual hand job. Those were nice. Maybe one of those where their cocks slid together, and they spurted like fountains, together.

Nicky ruminated on this possibility for a while until an obstacle intruded.

Who knew when Joe would return? Maybe he wouldn’t be back until late afternoon? It wasn’t unusual for him to be gone for hours. Sometimes he volunteered to help someone with some job. Regardless, he’d be hungry unless he ate lunch with the codgers, which was rare. And then he would want to get to work on the roof while there was still daylight.

Nicky turned off the water.

Maybe it would be better to get himself off right now and not worry Joe.

Yes, that seemed the best idea.

Nicky turned and leant back against the wall and spat on his hand.

He let his mind wander to the ocean and Joe and storms and—

“AARGH!”

Nicky was out of the stall in a flash.

“JOE?!”

There was the ladder. And there was Joe on the ground beside it.

“No, no, no!”

Nicky hurried to Joe and fell to the ground.

“Joe, did you break anything? Not your neck, please.”

“Sh-sh-sh, habibi. I’m fine.” Joe rolled to his side, and Nicky realized, with relief, that he wasn’t having a seizure.

He was laughing.

“That’s what I get for being a fucking Peeping Tom!”

“You were watching me?”

“Of course, I was watching you! I can see right into the shower from the roof.”

“I thought you’d still be at the store. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“I was quick at the store. I had my back to you, and by the time I realized you were there, well, love, you were already lost in your own thoughts by the look of things. Very nice thoughts.”

“Were you masturbating on the roof, Joe, when you fell?” asked Nicky calmly, but his hands were still checking for injury.

“No,” said Joe defensively.

“Were you thinking about masturbating on the roof, Joe?”

Joe snorted. “Maybe. But you’d better get some clothes on, hayati. The old guys from the hardware store are going to deliver the stuff we need and stay to help.”

“All right. Afterwards, I want to show you what I found on the beach.”

Joe leaned up. Nicky bent down.

Their lips met.


	13. Dogs Revisted. (Sweat)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Every now and then, it still costs Nicky to ask for what he wants. Warning: bit more angsty or hurt/comfort than most of these. 
> 
> A continuation of the previous chapter about the roof.
> 
> For 2020 Kinktober Day 24: Sweat.

“I think she’s good, but I suppose the real test will be the next storm,” said Joe, climbing down the ladder. “It was nice of the guys to come and help.”

Nicky hummed. “And drink all our beer,” he said without rancor. He was hovering close to Joe.

Joe brushed the side of Nicky’s face, then slid that hand round Nicky’s waist and kissed Nicky’s cheek. His voice was soft, the kind of measured softness which meant he was putting extra effort into it.

“Why don’t I wash up and you can show me your treasures, love?”

“Joe.”

Nicky’s eyes were fixed on the damp slope of Joe’s neck.

They stayed like that for a few silent breaths.

Joe kissed Nicky’s cheek again. “What do you want, hayati? You want to join me in the shower?”

Yes. No.

There were moments when Nicky was about a thousand years weary of being who he was. He tried to turn away, but Joe caught him, hard and fast.

Joe’s lips were against Nicky’s temple when he said,

“Tell me, hayati.”

Nicky shook his head like a stubborn child. Then he shrugged like a sullen teenager. His eyes stung, and he failed to convince himself it was the last rays of the bright sun piercing his retina.

“In what age have I judged you for what you want, ya amar?” continued Joe in an even more gentle tone that made Nicky want to curl up like a baby animal, something soft and furry, and live forever tucked napping against in Joe’s immortal heart.

Joe was going to make Nicky cry with that tone and those words, and that would be even worse. A question for the millennium: where was a swallowing-up earthquake when you wanted one?

“I want to lick you.” Nicky looked up and saw relief wash over Joe’s face. A smile was forming on his handsome lips. “Like a dog,” added Nicky with a sneer.

“Oh, habibi albi, if I could go back in time, the one thing I would not do is call you a dog.”

“The one thing I would not do is sack Jerusalem.”

Joe chortled. “Come. Let’s be dogs together.”

Joe led Nicky to the outdoor shower, but he didn’t turn on the water.

Nicky licked wet stripes up Joe’s neck, all the way around, like it was the trunk of a tree, only pausing when Joe peeled off his shirt.

Then Joe leaned back against the wooden wall and bent his arms at the elbow and put his hands behind his head. “I know you want it. Do it.”

Nicky gave a desperate cry and buried his face into Joe’s right armpit.

By the time he was eating out Joe’s left armpit, Nicky had forgotten why he’d been upset. He’d forgotten pretty much everything except the taste and smell and feel of Joe’s sweat.

Then he was on his knees, eating Joe’s ass and sucking Joe’s cock and letting the thin membrane of himself vanish to nothing.

* * *

The slap of cold water was violent.

“Good,” said Joe when Nicky made a noise of alarm and protest. “I need you to come back to me, at least enough to stand on your own feet while I clean off.” 

There was always a firm arm round Nicky’s waist, but it changed as Joe moved in and out of the spray and soaped and rinsed his body.

Eventually, Nicky pushed away from Joe and stumbled into the cottage. He went into the bathroom and closed the door. He washed his face, his mouth, his teeth. He got in the shower, the water as hot as possible, and washed his whole body.

When Joe found him, Nicky was in the kitchen. He’d already cut up half a loaf of bread and smeared it with honey.

Joe set the bucket of things Nicky had collected from the beach on the table, and he blessed Nicky with the love of those big, brown eyes and that warm smile.

“Tell me about ‘em?”

Nicky nodded and set the plate of bread on the table. They took their seats and Nicky began,

“This one reminded me of the poem you wrote about the ammonite…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if the muse is willing and flesh is strong, there'll be two more chapters before the end of the month. I'm hoping to do praise kink and poor Nicky stuck in a wall.


	14. So good. (Praise kink)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joe is good. Praise kink. Anal. Top Nicky.
> 
> For 2020 Kinktober Day 29: Praise kink.

“So good for me, aren’t you?”

Nicky punctuated his words with a tiny thrust, pushing his cock just a bit deeper into Joe. He had a hand round Joe’s neck and rubbed the skin under his chin tenderly with his thumb.

Joe made a surprised choking noise, turned his head to the side, and whispered, soft and ragged, “Say it again, love,” he licked his lips and added, “if you don’t mind.”

Nicky chuckled, the noise filthy and smug. For a moment he imagined that the beat of Joe’s heart grew louder. Or maybe it was his own heart, his own blood. Regardless, the noise was like a drum rhythm urging them on and on in this love dance.

Nicky shifted his hand and gripped Joe by the roots of his thick, soft, sweet-smelling hair. He yanked so hard that Joe’s head was wrenched further. He held him fast.

“I said that you,” Nicky waited until Joe’s glassy eyes were on his, then raised one single eyebrow, “my handsome lover, my sun, my poet-warrior, that you,” Nicky let his voice fall even deeper, exaggerating the curl his lips more than necessary because that’s where Joe’s gaze had dropped, “ _Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib_ , are so fucking,” Nicky snapped his hips with each last word, “good for me.”

Joe was in Nicky’s lap, impaled on Nicky’s cock. The parts of Joe that were not impaled or held in Nicky’s vise grip were trembling feverishly, violently. Joe was sweating, and Nicky lapped up the sweat greedily as he sped up his thrusting.

Despite Nicky’s pounding, it was Joe who came first, without so much as a touch to his own cock.

With one hand still in Joe’s hair and the other wrapped around Joe’s chest, Nicky held Joe through the spasms and moans. He kept up his syrupy words and his hard thrusts.

“Do you having any idea how beautiful you are when you come? Poetry in motion. Work of immortal art. Your face, your mouth, your body, your muscles, your cock.” Nicky rubbed the mess on Joe’s belly into his skin. “Your hole, Santa Madre di Dio, you take my cock so well. Tight, but stretching for me. Hot, but sharing your heat. Sweetly, hungrily clenching round my cock. You’re everything a lover wants. Ride me, love. I want to come, too. I want to fill this sweet ass up. Please, Joe, you’re so good. So generous with your smile and your warmth and your body and your touches and your hole…”

“Fuck!” Joe got his legs under him and began to bounce hard in Nicky’s lap.

“Oh, that’s it, love, that’s it,” mumbled Nicky, burying a wicked smile in the crook of Joe’s neck. “I knew you’d figure it out because you’re so smart, so clever about these things. Such a good lover. You know my body so well. So good, please don’t stop. I’m coming, love, coming for you, just you.”

Nicky sank his teeth into the slope of Joe’s shoulder as his hips bucked and his cock pissed stream after stream of hot come up into Joe’s ass.

Nicky and Joe breathed together, hoarse and whimpering, for a few minutes, then Joe pulled off. He slumped forward onto the bed and rolled at once onto his back.

He looked up at Nicky with a wide, warm grin.

“Who taught you how to do that?” he asked, still panting and flush.

Nicky smiled and fiddled with the bedding and shrugged. “You taught me everything I know, lover.”


	15. Bookmark. (Stuck in a wall.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While working at a used bookshop, Nicky gets stuck. Joe to the rescue. Anal. Oral. 
> 
> This was a new prompt for Kinktober, and I liked it a lot. This is the last of this collection. I hope everyone enjoyed these boys and their romping in Malta! 
> 
> For Kinktober Day 30: Stuck in a Wall.

**help**

**where are you?**

**shop**

**threat?**

**stupid me**

* * *

The bell on the front door of the used bookshop jangled.

“Nicky?”

“Oh, thank God! Joe! I’m here!”

“What’s going on? Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m stuck!”

“Stuck?!”

Joe stepped carefully in the direction of Nicky’s voice, looking round, expecting something, but nothing prepared him for what he saw when he finally found Nicky.

In the very last row of floor-to-ceiling bookcases, right before the back wall, there he was.

Joe stroked his beard thoughtfully and tilted his head sideways as he took in the scene.

Nicky’s arms and head were on one side of the bookcase, the side which was nearest the back wall. Nicky’s legs and ass were on the other side of the bookcase, the side facing the other bookcases. He was on his hands and knees.

“You’re like some kind of magic trick,” said Joe, his brow furrowed. “Lady sawed in half—by a bookcase.”

“An awful magic trick!” cried Nicky. “Look what happens when I try to back out or go forward.”

Nicky moved, attempting to extricate himself, and the whole bookcase wobbled, threatening to spill the hundreds of volumes resting on the shelves.

“Oh, no!” cried Joe. “Stop!”

Nicky stopped, and the bookcase stilled. “You see what I mean? I was afraid the whole thing would come crashing down on top of me. Or else I would cause the shelf to fall into the next and the next, like dominoes. I didn’t want to destroy Amira’s shop!”

“Not when we’re supposed to be taking care of it for her while she’s taking care of her new grandbaby, no. I can see that.”

Joe went round to Nicky’s head and squatted and smoothed his hair and rubbed his temples. “Are you injured?”

“No. Something fell on me, though.”

Joe reached in and felt the splintered shelf that weighed on Nicky’s back. “Is this heavy? Is it hurting you?”

“No, not really.”

“Are you scared? Panicked?”

“Now that you’re here, no. I feel very stupid.”

“Let me see.” Joe studied the shelves and Nicky for a minute. “All right. I’ve got a plan. I’m not leaving. I’m just going to look for something to help.”

Joe sang loudly as he moved about the bookshop, so Nicky wouldn’t feel alone, then returned to Nicky’s side.

“Nicky,” he said in a low, unmistakable tone.

“You’ve got to be kidding me, Joe.”

Nicky’s head dropped, then he raised it and turned those sea-colored eyes in Joe’s direction.

Joe read disbelief but not disapproval. “You said you’re not hurt or panicked, Nicky.” 

“I’m not but,” Nicky laughed, “how can you think this is sexy?”

“How can I not?” purred Joe. He held up the small bottle of lubricant he’d found in the pocket of Nicky’s hoodie. “I’ll make it good for you.” He was already getting to his knees and crawling towards Nicky’s lower half.

“You always do. I just don’t want all these old musty books come down on us!”

“We know how to be quiet.”

“The books don’t care if we’re _quiet_ , Joe!”

“We know how to be still, too. The front door is locked. ‘Closed’ sign up. May I?”

Nicky exhaled. “Yes, but why?”

“You’re stuck.”

“So?”

“Nothing for me to do but to make love to his sweet ass of yours.”

* * *

“FUCK!”

It was beautiful. Joe’s jaw ached, but the noises Nicky made and the tension in his body from trying to not to move while Joe’s tongue fucked his hole were glorious.

Nicky began to chant Joe’s name in between the names of various incarnations of the Virgin Mary.

Finally, Joe bit Nicky’s plump buttock and sat back on his heels, wiping his face and surveying the erotic tableau.

Nicky was hobbled by his underpants and trousers at his bent knees. His pale thighs and pale ass are were on exquisite display. From where Joe knelt, the rest of Nicky was obscured by the bookcase.

Joe rubbed Nicky’s pale thighs and pale ass, kneading, massaging, groping, and then, with light fingertips, tickled the expanse of skin between Nicky’s balls and hole.

“Joe!”

Joe was already hard. He opened his own trousers and freed his erection. “What should I do, hayati? Tell me. I need to hear it.”

“Finger-fuck me then cock-fuck me! Please!”

The neediness in Nicky’s voice surprised Joe and that need went straight to his cock. He’d assumed Nicky was, well, not exactly humoring him, but definitely not as into it as he was because, of course, Nicky couldn’t _see_ Nicky and see how fucking hot he looked stuck in a bookcase. But, apparently, Nicky liked it, too. Joe filed that tidbit away for later and popped the top of the lubricant bottle.

* * *

Nicky moaned openly, beautifully at the thrusting of Joe’s two fingers.

“Joe.”

“Anything, habibi.”

“Do that thing you do, you know, and I might come on my own.”

Now Joe did, and had done, quite a few things to Nicky in the nine hundred or so years they’d been fucking, so he needed the field narrowed and said as much.

Nicky made a stubborn noise and jerked his body.

“Don’t wiggle!” Joe gave Nicky’s ass a gentle slap with his free hand, and Nicky went still at once and moaned.

“Use your words,” demanded Joe.

“Tongue! And fingers! Reach!”

“See? That wasn’t so difficult, was it?”

Joe sank his two fingers into Nicky as deep as he could manage and curled and twisted them while he licked around Nicky’s rim. His other arm had to be firmly round Nicky’s hips so that he didn’t squirm too much, but that put him into contact with Nicky’s cock, which spat at first touch. 

Then there was nothing for it but to fuck Nicky’s ass, which Joe did.

* * *

“I’m still stuck,” said Nicky while Joe was tucking his cock back in his trousers.

“Nah.” Joe crawled over to the wooden stool he’d found. “You think I only brought lube?” He snorted dismissively. “Doesn’t your book say something like one cannot live by stuck ass alone.”

“I don’t think I remember that part,” said Nicky, giggling.

Joe quickly removed all the books directly above Nicky’s back and stacked them on the floor. He then wedged the stool under the splintered shelf and lifted it.

“Quick, slide backwards!”

Nicky slid quickly backwards. “Oh, thank goodness, I’m free!”

“I think we should probably get all the books from this section down before we repair the shelf. The stool won’t hold forever.”

“Thank you, Joe.”

“You’re welcome, love.”

Joe curled his arm round Nicky’s waist and gave his lips his lips a quick peck. Then he got down on his knees and looked through the gap to the wall and the round hole at the base of that wall.

“Nicky, were you feeding the mice in that mousehole when all this happened?”

Nicky looked away and got to his feet and pulled his underwear and trousers up. “All the books, you said? Just this section? Or the whole case?”

“Nicky?”

“Maybe. But, you know, in fiction, mice are helpful. They gnaw through rope. They make clothes. They solve mysteries.”

“But these mice?”

Nicky shook his head. “Not helpful. At. All.”

Joe chuckled.

He and Nicky worked silently at stacking all the books on the ground and when they were done, he said,

“It’s late. We can repair it tomorrow.”

Nicky was looking at him with those eyes. “You rescued me.”

Joe blinked slowly and let a warm wave wash over him. He shrugged.

“And you didn’t laugh.” That voice is so sweet and rich, like honey. Joe loved honey.

“I laughed a little bit,” he admitted.

Nicky curled an arm round Joe’s neck. His hot breath tickled Joe’s ear. “I came on just your fingers and your tongue, Joe, while I was stuck.”

Joe shivered. His head was swimming a bit. He brought his lips to Nicky’s.

They kissed, mouths sliding, Nicky’s tongue tentatively touching Joe’s, Joe opening to welcome it in.

They both hummed contentedly.

Nicky licked Joe’s lips with the tip of his tongue. He pressed his lips to Joe’s and turned his head to deepen the kiss. He petted Joe’s hair and tugged gently so that Joe’s head tilted back. He nuzzled Joe’s beard and kissed his neck and said,

“You saved me and the shop, Joe. You were there when I most needed you. You made me come untouched _and_ you got me out!”

“All in a day’s work.”

Nicky’s hands were caressing the front of Joe’s trousers and reaching between Joe’s legs and grasping Joe’s ass and everywhere Joe wanted them to be.

Then he was teasing along the waist of Joe’s trousers. “May I have your cock in my mouth, Joe?”

Joe could only nod as Nicky walked him backwards. When Joe’s back hit the wall, Nicky was undoing Joe’s trousers and falling to his knees.

“Watch, Joe.”

As if Joe could look anywhere else while Nicky’s lips spread round his cock, while his cock disappeared into Nicky’s mouth, while Nicky gripped the hairy base of Joe’s cock and bobbed and slurped obscenely. Joe supposed there were some people who wondered what it was like to be fellated by a Renaissance sculpture, well, Joe knew. It was a fucking work of art. It belonged in a museum.

“Nicky.” That was all the warning Joe could manage, and, luckily, after nine hundred years, it was all he needed.

“So good,” murmured Nicky as he pulled off and swallowed and wiped his mouth. He kissed and licked and nuzzled around Joe’s cock, his hip bones, tufts of pubic hair, the crevice of his thighs. “So good, so good, so good. How did I get so lucky to have it so good?”

Joe’s legs felt like jelly. He might have been drunk. He was definitely light-headed.

The voice, the words, the hands, they were all Nicky and all love and all for Joe.

Nicky’s hands were touching him, kept touching him. Not his cock, which was oversensitive, but everywhere else. Nicky breathed, “My hero, my dream” against the skin of Joe’s belly. Then Nicky’s hands were pushing up under Joe’s shirt and rubbing his chest and his nipples. “So hot, so strong, so smart. Those big brown eyes. This lovely bronze skin. This hair,” Nicky bit somewhere, Joe wasn’t certain where, “You take my breath away. You make me hard. You make me _leak_ , Joe. You make a mess of me.” 

Nicky’s mouth on his chest. Nicky’s mouth on his nipple. Nicky’s words in his ear.

“You love me so hard, Joe. How can I not love you back just as hard? How can the moon not reflect so warm a sun?”

Then, as if of their own accord, Joe’s fingers wound in Nicky’s fingers and brought Nicky’s hands to his ass.

Nicky hummed in comprehension and turned Joe round and pulled him back and bent him forward and found the lube and stretched Joe’s hole and slicked himself and fucked Joe, fucked Joe until he was drowning in a dreamy sea.

When Joe surfaced, he was in Nicky’s arms on the floor of the bookshop. Nicky was petting his hair and humming an old song from the old days.

Nicky kissed Joe’s temple. “This has been a wonderful day, Joe. I think I will remember this one.”

“So will I, ya amar. So will I.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
